By ChaosEternus Chapter 17
Things got even tenser when it was announced that at the next location we found that seemed reasonably safe, we would be taking Galactica's FTL drives offline for overdue maintenance, which would in turn prevent the entire fleet from escaping to safety if the Cylons attacked.
Shit, but it sounded like the recipe for a disaster, but then leaving the drives without proper maintenance for any longer was a guaranteed recipe for disaster, not just a highly likely one so I suppose it had to be done but still
The Civilian ships would not jump away from Galactica if they knew Galactica wasn't following because it would leave them entirely defenceless if the Cylons should find them. It seemed they much preferred having Galactica at their side, even if it meant being in the middle of a furball rather then an uncertain future without her, not knowing if she was coming to meet them or had been destroyed.
I could sympathise entirely, there is nothing so morale destroying as uncertainty and without Galactica insight, you could assume that quite quickly, the worst sort of hysteria would set in.
It left me at sort of alone though, with condition two being maintained the whole time the repairs were under way, my research assistant, the very capable Gaeta was otherwise occupied and Donnelly and Dafydd were either at stations or resting.
In fact, everyone on Galactica, including a very small group of scientists had an emergency station, except for me. I had been too busy on various research projects to be trained in any of the skill areas the ship required and my earthborn skills weren't helpful, not in this situation.
As it was, the only thing I had made a point of doing, along with both my comrades, was get the Colonial equivalent to our very basic field medics qualifications. That in mind, I headed for medical, told them I was available just in case and was instantly handed a med-kit and sent back to the landing bay.
Seems like the Doctors were fed up with having to treat minor injuries as Priority One, just so Tyrol's crew could get back to their work as fast as possible without leaking blood over components that really didn't like the stuff, so having me on hand to deal with it would be a major help.
That I could live with, but medical sending a runner after me with another med-kit made me seriously want to ask exactly how bad did it get in the pod during combat.
It took a surprisingly long time for the Cylons to find us, three days in fact. But they found us putting the FTL drives back together, which naturally made them totally unusable, in fact a figure of half an hour was quoted as necessary to get the drives in a state fit to do one jump, no more.
Tyrol answered my question of how long Galactica usually spent in combat and what her record was and I found myself wishing fervently that he hadn't. Fifteen minutes average since the Colonies fell, twenty minutes was the record. We had a guaranteed 30 minutes minimum.
The situation just sucked.
It wasn't long before I was too busy to worry about that though, I found out quite quickly how easy it was to get relatively minor scrapes, bumps and bleeders in the pod when you're frantically polishing off maintenance on Vipers so you can kick them through the launch bays and into the fight and it was literally a minute from the Condition One sirens blaring and me getting my first customer.
I did notice, and start to get real worried when Vipers started landing on again in order to get re-armed and refuelled. That was a sure sign that the combat was taking far too long. Even more encouraging was the Vipers that the few personnel left in the bay after all the DC parties left took one look at and refused to let anyway near the launch tubes. Okay, I suppose the fact that they landed on at all was somewhat better than the alternative but it didn't hide the fact that we were taking losses.
Crashdown, a Viper pilot was the first person I sent off to sickbay and quite frankly, I didn't think much of his chances. Even if he survived, he had third degree burns and would most likely be scarred for life.
At twenty-four minutes into combat, Galactica's hull stopped lurching and incredulous looks were exchanged between the ten of us who were now in the bay, most poking their heads out from underneath Vipers as it registered.
The Cylons they're not firing at us anymore!
It was Cally who said it, but the rest of us were thinking it.
Didn't answer the big question though, why had they stopped firing?